Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Scores of microbus drivers began striking
in Cairo’s Maadi district early Monday morning in protest over the fatal
shooting of a fellow driver by police earlier in the day.

The strike left throngs of commuters stranded in several parts of Maadi, particularly Al-Arab and Street Seven neighborhoods.

A
driver participating in the strike, speaking on condition of anonymity,
told Mada Masr that the microbus driver was killed after a minor
collision with a police vehicle under a bridge on the ring road in
Maadi’s Saqr Qureish neighborhood. They quarreled, and then the officer
took out his weapon and shot the microbus driver in the head, his
colleague reported.

The Ministry of Interior presented a slightly different account of the event in a statement on Monday, asserting
that a member of the Basateen Police Station, who had been called to
resolve the quarrel, accidentally killed the driver. Upon arriving
at the scene, he reportedly responded by "firing a warning shot in the
air from the gun in his possession, which resulted in the accidental
death of the driver."

Another striking driver, also speaking on
condition of anonymity, identified the deceased driver as a 20-year-old
from Beni Suef, known by the nickname “Gamal Julia.” The Ministry of
Interior’s statement identified him as “Gamal,” with the initials
“N.T.” Other striking drivers stated that their deceased colleague had
been married for just under a month.

Despite the microbus strike,
taxis and public buses continued to operate on Monday, prompting several
drivers to form roadblocks to impede traffic. In some instances,
striking drivers threatened other drivers who were not taking part in
the collective action.

The fatality in Maadi is the latest in a
string of similar incidents in which police have killed unarmed
civilians in recent months.

According to the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence of Violence and Torture’s July report, 40 people across the country have died as a result of police brutality this year.

In mid-August, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi introduced amendments to provisions of the police authority law,
after Parliament approved the legislation earlier in the month. The
amendments impose greater restrictions on the police's use of force and
firearms in incidents which do not warrant such a response.

The
amendments also mandated that police personnel should not be in constant
possession of state-issued firearms, stipulating that they submit their
weapons to storage facilities designated by their presiding officers at
the conclusion of each shift, except in cases where a presiding officer
or authority judges that it is necessary to maintain possession.

Officials in the Upper Egyptian
governorate of Sohag are conducting investigations to identify those
involved in dumping the carcasses of 250 skinned donkeys disposed of on
a desert road near the town of Akhmim.

Local media outlets reported that investigations began on Monday, following the discovery of the donkeys the previous day. Graphic photos circulating on
social media revealed how the animals were dumped in the open, after
being slaughtered and skinned for their hides, which are increasingly
being marketed as cattle leather and sold at marked-up prices in
domestic markets.

The 250 carcasses were found in one
concentrated area along a small desert road near the village of Kola
without a safe or hygienic burial, in close proximity to agricultural
and residential areas.

Sohag Governor Ayman Abdel Moneim
has mobilized a team of veterinarians and environmental specialists
from the governorate to safely dispose of the decomposing bodies at a
safe distance away from any inhabited areas, reported the privately
owned Youm7 news portal.

The
veterinarians noted that the donkeys had not been slaughtered for their
meat, but had only been skinned for their hides, a recurring phenomenon
in Egypt.

Less than one month ago, three men in Old Cairo were jailed after being apprehended in a tannery with the carcasses of four donkeys. Another three donkeys were found alive in the tannery.

The
men reportedly confessed to selling the donkey hides for substantially
marked-up prices at local leather shops and tanneries, which market them
as being leather from cattle. Jailed pending investigations, they added
that they were not slaughtering or selling the donkeys for their meat.

An unnamed veterinarian from the Ministry of Agriculture told local media outlets
last month that the average price of an adult donkey may exceed LE200,
yet some farmers and vendors of donkeys – who have traditionally
supplied local zoos and circuses, to feed lions and tigers – are
currently demanding nearly 10 times that price per animal.

He
pointed out the sale of donkey hides is far more profitable than the
sale of their meat, particularly amid market indicators of a growing overseas demand for donkey hides. Among the countries with the largest demand for donkey hides is China, where they are increasingly used to manufacture gelatin, glue and medicines.

Egyptian
prosecutors should drop a case against the country’s former chief
corruption auditor that violates the right to free speech and harms
efforts to combat corruption.

A Cairo court for minor offenses convicted Hisham Geneina of
disseminating false information and gave him a suspended one-year
sentence on July 28, 2016.

Geneina is appealing the verdict but had to
pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds (US$2,252) and 10,000 (US$1,126)
for bail. Geneina’s defense said that the charges against him were based
on a misquoted statement to the media about the cost of corruption.

“The abuse of free speech in Egypt has heightened to the point of
turning a misunderstanding into criminal charges punishable by prison,”
said Nadim Houry,
deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “This escalation can have
a dangerous chilling effect, especially on officials responsible for
reporting corruption.”

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi set a precedent by removing Geneina
as head of the Central Auditing Organization, a key financial watchdog,
in March, after Geneina made several statements to the media
asserting that state institutions and prosecutors were ignoring or
stymying action on his reports of corruption. Geneina was the only
remaining senior official from the administration of President Mohamed
Morsy, who was removed in a July 2013 coup led by then-Defense Minister
al-Sisi.

Geneina has repeatedly alleged endemic government corruption
and said that the country’s prosecutor general was not investigating
many of his hundreds of corruption reports, including against the
Interior Ministry. In December 2015, the independent newspaper al-Youm al-Sabaaquoted Geneina as saying that corruption had cost Egypt more than 600 billion pounds (US$67.6 billion) that year.

Independent reviews of Geneina’s report
by economic journalists and researchers found that despite
methodological weaknesses, it did not exaggerate the cost of graft and
may have underestimated it.

On March 28, al-Sisi fired Geneina and replaced him with Hisham
Badawi, his recently appointed deputy and a former senior member of the
Supreme State Security Prosecution who, according to media reports, had investigated corruption cases against former President Hosni Mubarak and several business tycoons, most of which ended with their acquittal.

On May 17, Geneina’s lawyers filed suit at the Administrative Court to contest his dismissal, saying it was unconstitutional and unlawful.
They also claimed he was fired after pro-government TV anchors
systematically targeted him. A court postponed a hearing on the lawsuit
until September 5.

On June 2, the Supreme State Security Prosecution referred Geneina to trial
before the New Cairo Minor Offenses Court on charges of disseminating
false news that harmed the national interest.

Geneina called the case
retaliation for speaking out and challenging his dismissal and refused
to pay a 10,000-pound (US$118) bail to avoid pretrial detention. He was
detained briefly before his family paid the bail.

On June 28, Geneina’s defense team asked the court to suspend his trial until a verdict was reached in a separate lawsuit Geneina had filed against al-Youm al-Sabaa for misquoting him, since the outcome could affect the charges against him, but the court released its verdict as planned on July 28. The judge imposed the maximum sentence under Article 188 of the penal code for disseminating false news.

By law, Egypt’s president appoints the head of the Central Auditing
Organization and other independent agencies but cannot fire them before
their term ends. But in July 2015, in the absence of a parliament,
al-Sisi issued Decree 89 of 2015,
granting himself the authority to dismiss agency heads in certain
cases, including if they pose a threat to national security, fail to
perform their duties, or lose trust.

One study
by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a prominent local human
rights group, found that Egypt lost US$10 billion in gas revenues
between 2005 and 2011 as a result of corrupt contracts that allowed gas
to be sold abroad for below-market prices. Egypt subsequently faced a
drastic energy shortage that has caused daily blackouts in parts of the
country, interrupting the lives and work of millions of Egyptians,
including at vital facilities such as hospitals.

After Mubarak’s ouster, prosecutors charged many of his high-level
officials with corruption offenses, though few have been convicted.
Mubarak’s interior minister, Habib al-Adly, was acquitted in corruption cases
that could have led to 45 years in prison, though he was convicted and
served a three-year sentence for forcing Interior Ministry conscripts to
work for him and his family without pay. In May 2016, an aide to
Egypt’s health minister was arrested after allegedly receiving bribes worth 4.5 million pounds (US$507,000) from a medical device company.

The charges against Geneina violate international human rights laws
that protect free speech. Article 19 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Egypt is a party,
guarantees freedom of expression and opinion. Limitations are only
permissible when they are stated clearly by law and necessary for the
protection of the rights or reputation of others, or the protection of
national security, public order, public health or morals.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors the implementation of the ICCPR, has stressed that freedom of expression
“is a necessary condition for the realization of the principles of
transparency and accountability that are, in turn, essential for the
promotion and protection of human rights.”

The firing and prosecution of Geneina raise concerns about
government attempts to undermine the independence and efficacy of
anti-corruption bodies. The Egyptian government should uphold its
obligation to foster the autonomy of investigating authorities under its
2005 ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.

As the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights asserts,
“corruption is an enormous obstacle to the realization of all human
rights – civil, political, economic, social and cultural, as well as the
right to development.”

Transparency International, which ranks Egypt 88th out of 168 countries in terms of corruption, found that bribery is also pervasive
both within Egypt and the entire Middle East and North Africa region.
It stated that nearly one out of three citizens who try to obtain basic
services in the region must resort to paying bribes, which clearly
violates the principles of nondiscrimination and equal access embodied
in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,
which Egypt ratified in 1982.

Another study
by Transparency International found that two out of three Egyptians
believe the parliament, media, judiciary, police, and education system
to be corrupt, with more than 80 percent believing that corruption
either stayed the same or increased following the 2011 uprising.

“If Sisi is serious about fighting corruption within Egypt, as he
has said time and again, he should empower the regulatory agencies
charged with investigating graft instead of single-handedly weakening
the autonomy they depend on,” Houry said. “Protecting the independence
of anti-corruption organizations and their officials protects the
freedoms and rights of Egyptians.”

More than 500 individuals and civil
society groups signed petitions in solidarity with 26 civilian workers
from Alexandria Shipyard Company who are currently standing trial before
a military court.

The case has been ongoing since June
18. The workers, half of whom are being tried in absentia, face charges
of instigating strikes and obstructing operations at the company. They
deny the charges, claiming they weren’t involved in any strike action
but staged a sit-in that did not halt production.

Military
prosecutors have charged the workers with violating Article 124 of
Egypt’s Penal Code, which stipulates penalties of three months to one
year imprisonment and/or fines of up to LE500 for civil servants who
deliberately refrain from performing their duties at work.

A verdict in the ongoing case was due to be issued on August 2, but was postponed to August 16.

During
the sit-in, staged on May 22 and 23, workers demanded the payment of
the national minimum wage (LE1,200 per month), overdue profit-shares,
annual Ramadan bonuses, health insurance coverage and the dismissal of
the company’s chief administrator, as well as the re-operation of the
shipyard’s stalled production lines.

Despite the
non-violent nature of their sit-in, military police were deployed to the
Shipyard Company, where security forces have prevented nearly 2,500
shipyard workers from entering the premises since May 24, bringing
almost all production to a halt.

Military conscripts
were deployed to temporarily replace some of the civilian workers at the
company, according to lawyer Mohamed Awad, who added that the lockdown
is still being enforced despite promises the company would be
operational again by August 1.

The company’s nearly
2,500 excluded workers, who are not on trial, have been paid their basic
wages, but not the bonuses that usually supplement their incomes, as
they didn’t work during the 70-day lockdown, according to Awad. These
wages amount to less than the minimum wage.

One online
petition, signed by over 330 individuals, calls on Egyptian authorities
to end the use of military trials to punish civilian workers for
standing up for their rights. The petition adds that Alexandria Military
Court should “immediately halt this illegal persecution.”

Another
email-based petition, circulated by labor activists, was signed by over
200 people and endorsed by 13 political groups.

The petition cites
Article 204 of Egypt’s 2014 Constitution, which stipulates, “Civilians
shall not stand trial before military courts except for crimes that
constitute a direct assault on military institutions, the Armed Forces,
its camps or any other body under its jurisdiction… including military
factories.”

The 13 groups who signed the petition
include: The Bread and Freedom Party, the Karama Party, the Strong Egypt
Party, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the National Partnership
Current, the Popular Current, the Liberties Committee of the Journalists
Syndicate, the Revolutionary Socialists, Youth for Justice and Freedom,
the April 6 Youth Movement’s Democratic Front, Toward a Just Labor Law
campaign, Workers' Struggle Current, and the Independent General Union
for Tourism Workers.

“Neither workers nor other
civilians should stand trial before military courts, or any other form
of exceptional courts,” the petition stated.

These
petitions were preceded by a solidarity conference in Cairo on June 27,
titled: Against Military Trials of Workers, which demanded that all
charges be dropped and the case be referred to a civilian court.

Some
parliamentarians also issued their own statements criticizing the
trial, the latest in a number of military trials against civilian
workers.

“Egypt is a state, not a military barracks,”
Member of Parliament Haitham al-Hariry says, asserting that the trial
“aims to intimidate and threaten workers,” and “Civilians should not
stand trial before military courts, even if they are working under
military administration.”

ETUF
Vice President, Magdy al-Badawy told media outlets in late July that the
trial of civilian workers before a military court is regular procedure.
Badawy added that, since the company is administered by the Defense
Ministry, its workers should be subject to the provisions of military
laws.

Alexandria Shipyard Company was established as a
state-owned enterprise in the 1960s, and has been owned and operated by
Egypt’s Defense Ministry since 2007.

At least 18,000
civilians have stood trial before military tribunals since the popular
uprising of January 25, 2011, according to rights activists.